Analysis of Sonnet To Mrs. Siddons

Helen Maria Williams 1761 (London) – 1827



Siddons! the Muse, for many a joy refin'd,
Feelings which ever seem too swiftly fled-
For those delicious tears she loves to shed,
Around thy brow the wreath of praise would bind-
But can her feeble notes thy praise unfold?
Repeat the tones each changing passion gives,
Or mark where nature in thy action lives,
Where, in thy pause, she speaks a pang untold!
When fierce ambition steels thy daring breast,
When from thy frantic look our glance recedes;
Or oh, divine enthusiast! when opprest
By anxious love, that eye of softness pleads-
The sun-beam all can feel, but who can trace
The instant light, and catch the radiant grace!


Scheme ABBACDDCEFAFGG
Poetic Form
Metre 10011100101 1011011101 1101011111 0111011111 1101011101 0101110101 1111001101 1011110101 1101011101 11110110101 110101011 1101111101 0111111111 01010101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 625
Words 112
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 498
Words per stanza (avg) 110
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
68

Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist poet and translator of French-language works A religious dissenter she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France A controversial figure in her own time the young Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth but she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton more…

All Helen Maria Williams poems | Helen Maria Williams Books

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    What year was "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" originally published?
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    C 1789
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